what the hell?

i have a good deal of questions about my faith-the things that i’ve come up with on my own, the things i’ve been taught, the things i was taught that i now reject, the whole gamut. and of course, one of them is hell. i’m probably not alone in that i was fascinated with the book of Revelations as a kid and i read that book as much as the 18th psalm or the crazy adventures of the judges and kings of early Israel. beautiful, wild stories that captured my imagination. so now i come back decades later and although my ideas and beliefs about the Christianity that i was raised in are worlds apart from my current paradigm, i’ve let a lot of other people do the talking, thinking, and heavy lifting. i’ve had good conversations that have formed me, but very little of it is original on my part.

my knee jerk reaction is to just hop around online and see what i can find. i’m confidant that my high school and college teachers were a bit too paranoid in their fear of the internet and the many lies and half-truths could wriggle their way into my identity without my realizing. it’s true, there’s a lot of crap out there and it’s not hard to find, and much of it masquerades as truth or news or fact. however, a large portion of that drivel is poorly designed, html heavy, really big then really small fonts, yellow and red text on black background like this. and of course some of it is cnn.com or washingtonpost.com or whatever you like. even the almighty ESPN has to issue retractions sometimes. so i’m going to do this the old fashioned way in more facets than come easily: i get to do my own research. no lifting other people’s online papers and the like. i’ll go to credible sources. and i’ll look through various translations of the Scriptures to see what various people have taken various things to mean. i don’t have the desire to present a single coherent 45 page paper, so i’mjust posting things as i complete them, and ideally, they can be taken as a loosely associated “whole” and be beneficial for those who read, even faith-altering. i read Dante’s Inferno in high school and one of our projects was to write our own canto. i’ll have to dig that up and post it so you can see how far i’ve deteriorated as time has gone on. i remember particularly liking that assignment. anyway, i guess the place to start is where i’vebeen–the kinds of things i grew up thinking and reading and hearing. my temptation with this is going to be to talk about apocalyptic literature and eschatology. i will flee this temptation as best as i can.

onto what is past. the Bible is a good starting place for this. the Christian faithholds the Bible in high regard. supposedly, any doctrinal or theological material we hold tightly with a closed should be expressed clearly within its books. of course that statement (i’m sure there’s some creed that says it more accurately or eloquently, but honestly, how many modern Christian even know any of the creeds?) presents all sorts of problems, of which hell is only in the top 5 or 10 by said standards. but the pictures in our minds that are conjured when we speak of hell have their basis the writings of the prophets, several apostles, and even Jesus himself. so what exactly is written, then?

Rev 5:3 tells of a hermetically sealed scroll (isn’t it ironic bringing a word with Greek mythological roots into a discussion about heaven and hell) that no one “in heaven, on the earth, or under the earth” could open. under the earth? hell maybe? probably not, because a few verses later (v. 13), everyone in heaven or on/under the earth is singing God’s praises… an unlikely response for a damned, soul, i submit.

Hades is personified in Rev 6:8. Hades, of course, is a nod to the Greek god of the underworld. Hades is a word commonly translated as “hell” in the NT. OT uses are substituted for “Sheol” (the pit/abode of the dead). however, according to Job and Ecclesiastes, Sheol is the common destination for both the righteous and unrighteous dead.

Revelations 9, a 5th trumpet is sounded and a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth is given a key to the shaft of the Abyss. the Abyss has tortuous but nonlethal locusts (with an exquisite taste for non-God followers’ blood–i hear it’s wonderful) and smoke (think of the shaft as a chim-chimney cheroo). the Abyss will also be the portal for the Beast who will kill the 2 witnesses, but apparently, it will be an ineffective killing, as the witnesses will be resurrected a few days later.

Revelation 12 depicts the war between angels (called “messengers) and a great dragon (who also has messengers). the dragon is familiar as the Devil, literally, or the adversary. more on that notion later. but when the dragon is defeated, he is hurled to the earth. some folks hold to this strangely medieval notion that hell is actually inside the earth, as in, you and i are separatedfrom separation from God by a few miles of crust and molten lava. it’s wise to note that in these terms of hell and Satan, the destruction bent dragon spews water from his mouth and the earth helps out those in danger by opening it’s mouth (figuratively?) and swallowing the water, which gets the dragon all sorts of peeved at the failure of his hastily conceived and easily derailed plan. hell? inside the earth? i think not.

It’s also interesting to note that the idea of a “lake of fire” is finds some similar roots in the description of the lake of “glass mixed with fire,” (literally, mingled with fire) in Revelation 15, where those who are victorious over the dragon play on God-given harps, singing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. Additionally, smoke from the glory of the presence of God flows out of the Tabernacle, described in the same chapter. so, where there’s smoke (and fire), there isn’t necessarily hell.

Revelation 19 portrays the battle between Mr. Faithful and True, who rides a white horse, has a head that accommodate many crowns, sports fiery eyes, a sword-like appendageprotruding from his mouth, and can fearlessly show the most bad-ass tattoo of all time: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. in all caps, no less. take that, conservative, Mosaic-law-toting conservatives. the Son of God himself is gonna be inked when He shows back up. this last bit is worthnoting. upon the defeat of the Beast and his False Prophet, the two thugs are cast into a fiery lake of sulphur. all the followers are then killed by the sword-tongue of Mr. True, with their bodies being left for carrionbird food. chapter 20 has an angel locking up Satan into the Abyss for 1000 years, witha time-release lock, which doesn’t hold Satan down forever. Satan breaks out, assembles his people for war, but before even insults or taunts can be exchanged, fire comes down from heaven (yes, fire from heaven), and devours the bad guys. then the devil gets tossed into Burning Sulphur Lake, along with his comrades, the Beast the False Prophet. finally, all the dead are judged by Him who sits Great White Throne, and those whose names aren’t found in the Book of Life are cast into Burning Sulphur Lake. interestingly, the common notion of the Book of Life may be a bit out of whack, because in the very next chapter, people described as “those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” are just outside the holy city walls. oh, and dogs are outside the city, too. sorry animal lovers. it sounds like all dogs make it to the general location of heaven, but not “to” heaven. the apocryphal Book of Jubilees mentions a Book of Life and a Book of Death.  ancient Jewish customs hold that God opens the Book of Life and Book of Death every new year to sit in judgement over all creatures, not just humanity. as to the origin of the idea of a Book of Life, it’s possible that Jewish folks adopted and adapted the idea during their exile years in Babylon, where the Tablet of Destiny is a prominent part of their death cult. Egypt had their own Book of Death (or so it was named by some white male imperialist in the mid 1800’s). it was actually a funeral text from the Old Kingdom (around 3000 years Before Common Era), that coincidentally includes descriptions of death, burial, divine judgment, and spiritual vindication.

now, this is only the beginning of what may be a tiresome and dreary process, and i have yet to complete an exhaustive study. i probably won’t complete one, in fact. but in the book of Revelation, i have yet to see mention of a couple of things that are traditionally associated with hell. first, the fire, sores, earthquakes that make islands and mountains disappear, hail that “weighs about 100 pounds,” locust, and other judgement and calamity all occur to living human beings on the earth itself. second, the mention of souls or bodies in terms of judgment are only found in terms of merchants who traded with Babylon the Great (the whore). and these merchants were bummed out at the decimation of Babylon, whom they had previously shared a booming economy exchanging everything imaginable: cinnamon, myrrh, horses and carriages, ivory, and of course, the usual human bodies and souls, which are so easy to put a price on these days! for now, i hope this brief peak into the book of Revelation has piqued your curiosity, and that you’ll let me know what you think as we try and remove the cobwebs of hearsay and falsehood from the portrait of our theology.